Ibn Saud, the Wahhabi and Oil, to 1945

Wahhabism and the Saud Family

In the 1700s, a Sunni Muslim named Muhammad
Wahhab (1703-1791) traveled about the Ottoman Empire comparing what he saw
with what he thought Islam was supposed to be according to the Koran. He began a new movement
that denounced all influences in Islam that had developed after the writing
of the Koran: luxurious living, Sufi influence, rationalism, visiting
the tombs of saints and asking intercession of the Prophet or the Imams. Wahhab
viewed the granting of godly powers to Muhammad and others as a violation of
Islam's strict monotheism. Wahhab's movement labeled all other Muslims as polytheist.
They called themselves "Unitarians," or simply Muslims. Others called them the
Wahhabi (Wahabi).

Wahhab was forced to flee from
Medina,
and in a more rural inland area – in the
Nejd
– he was adopted
by the Saud family. With a combination of
warrior power with camels and Wahhabi religious zeal the Saud regime
spread across Arabia. In 1802 an army of 12,000 Wahhabi
warriors attacked Shia
in the city of
Karbala, slaying 4,000
of that city's inhabitants and smashing Shia
holy sites. In
1803 they attacked Mecca and, aware of the slaughter in Karbala,
the Meccans opened their town to Saud rule. Opposed to images,
the Wahhabi warriors smashed opulent graves, and they forbade smoking.
After taking power in Medina they smashed grave-sites again,
including the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed. In 1813, the Ottoman
sultan sent expeditions against
Wahhabism. The defeated head of the Saud family was taken
in a cage to Istanbul and beheaded.

The Ikhwan (Brethren), a photo probably
from the 1920s

King Saud, 1927, at fifty-one.

By the late 1800s, Saud family members were refugees in
Kuwait. In
late 1901, a twenty-year-old member of the Saud family,
Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, was without a kingdom, but he had allies. At the age of 28 he rode from
Kuwait with from 40 to 60 relatives and retainers, ready
for combat against the Rashid family, a dynasty centered in northern Nejd, which had driven out the Sauds and killed the brother of his father. On the moonless night of January 15-16, ibn Saud and
some of his men went over the wall of the compound at Riyadh
and prepared for an assault at the main gate at dawn. Ibn
Saud and his men killed defenders of the compound. Saud was now in possession of his place of birth – a
kingdom that measured 700 by 700 yards.

Ibn Saud remained allied with
Wahhabi warriors, with Bedouins called the Ikhwan --
in Arabic the Brotherhood. Mounted on camels
they helped Ibn Saud maintain his position at Riyadh.

In 1914 before the war, Ibn Saud allied himself with the
Turks, agreeing that he should have relations with no other
foreign power and be committed to joining Turkish forces
in resisting any aggression.
When war came Saud opted for neutrality and kept his options
open. Then he allied himself with the British, who offered
recognition of a middle of the Arabian Peninsula (namely
the Nejd and Hasa) as his – with the proviso
that he and his heirs not be antagonistic toward Britain.
Ibn Saud agreed not to enter into relations with another
foreign power (Britain's enemy the Ottomans) and the British promised to come to the aid of Ibn Saud
should he be the victim of aggression. Britain lent Ibn
Saud £20,000,
1,000 weapons and 200,000 rounds of ammunition. Added to
this was a subsidy of £5,000 per month.
This strengthened Saud against his territorial rival, the Hashemite family, which in 1915 remained allied with Britain's
current enemy, the Ottomans.

Matters became more complicated for Saud in 1916 when the
Hashemite family broke with the Turks and went over to the
side of the British – what became known as the Arab revolt.
Britain began looking after the interests of both ibn Saud
and the Hashemite family, and the British would draw territorial lines
that were not to Saud's liking, especially regarding Kuwait.
Saud's old enemy the Rashid family – south of Iraq and southeast of what today is Jordan – remained allied with the Ottomans. The Rashids were supplied by the Ottomans and remained the dominant power on the Arabian
Peninsula.

After the war and the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Rashid's were without Ottoman support. Beginning in May 1919, Saud moved against
the Rashids. He defeated them in November 1921, showed
them clemency and reconciled with them, marrying the widow
of their now dead ruler. His territory now extended northwest and north
to the edge of territories the British had given to the Hashemite
brothers: Transjordan and Iraq.

The British responded to a raid by the Ikhwan into Transjordan
with a ground and air attack that killed all but 8 of 1,500
Ikhwan. Ibn Saud kept his cool and submitted to a British
decision regarding borders. The British gave him a free
hand in the Hejaz and the Nejd. In 1924-25, Ibn Saud and
his Wahhabi warriors drove Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, the
father of the Hashemite brothers in Iraq and Transjordan,
from the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. After the caliphate was abolished in Turkey, Hussein proclaimed himself Caliph of all Muslims. He felt justified in this because his family, the Hashemites, claimed
to be descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. But he was losing out in the competition for power. On January
8, 1926, ibn Saud was proclaimed King of
the Hejaz and Sultan of Nejd. Hussein fled to Cyprus and
then went to Transjordan where his son was king, and Saud ruled Medina and Mecca.

The shrines in Mecca and Medina provided ibn Saud with a
modest income. In 1926 he called a conference in Mecca,
and delegations of Muslims from various areas of the Muslim
world came. He introduced the delegates to his Wahhabi
ulama. He charmed the delegates, and, thereafter, pilgrimages
to Mecca became regular and grew in size.

The Saud family reinforced the allegiance of surrounding tribes
through marriages. To keep his new kingdom united, he married
a daughter from every tribe as well as from the influential
clerical families – more than twenty wives, although never
more than four at one time. Meanwhile, the Ikhwan warriors
wanted to extend their Wahhabism beyond Arabia, and ibn
Saud saw this as trouble and tried to restrain them. The Ikhwan
were unhappy with ibn Saud. They believed that they had
been insufficiently rewarded for their contribution
to ibn Saud's conquests. No Ikhwan had been made a governor
in any Hejaz city. Ikhwan raids across ibn Saud's frontiers
had embarrassed ibn Saud, and the British
responded again with their air force, pursuing the Ikhwan
back into ibn Saud's territory. The Ikhwan created
a disturbance at Mecca. They disliked ibn Saud's association
with the English and his importation of devilish
devices such as the telephone. In
1929, the Ikhwan revolted.
The ulama exercised their moral authority and sided with
Saud rather than the Ikhwan, whom they declared to be in
violation of Islamic principals. Ibn Saud crushed Ikhwan
resistance and built a National Guard.

King Saud in 1945

In 1932
ibn Saud gave his name to the regions
in Arabia that he had unified, calling it Saudi
Arabia, and he declared himself King of Saudi Arabia.
Wahhabism remained a state sanctioned doctrine, and,
because of Mecca, Wahhabism gained influence from India
and Sumatra to North Africa and the Sudan. The Wahhabi
(or Salafi as
they prefer to be called) continued to adhere to simple,
short prayers, undecorated mosques, and the uprooting
of gravestones in order to prevent what they saw as idolatrous
veneration. They avoided the kind of ostentatious spirituality
that had become a part of Christianity when Christianity
united with the Roman Empire. Moreover, they forbade the
name of the Prophet Mohammed to be inscribed in mosques,
and they forbade the celebration of the Prophet's birthday.
Mohammed had claimed no godly powers. His original followers
had not seen him as a god, and the Wahhabi did not want
him celebrated like a god. Muhammad, as he himself is
reported to have said, was just a messenger.